


Not a Real Green Dress (That’s Cruel)

by AmazingGraceless



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Astoria Greengrass's Blood Curse | Blood Malediction, F/M, Pureblood Culture (Harry Potter), Pureblood Society (Harry Potter), perfectly arranged marriage, post-DH, two screwed up kids deciding to move past what their families taught them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 17:06:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29762835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmazingGraceless/pseuds/AmazingGraceless
Summary: Astoria has an arranged marriage—but Draco wants to know if she really wants to.
Relationships: Astoria Greengrass/Draco Malfoy
Kudos: 11





	Not a Real Green Dress (That’s Cruel)

**Author's Note:**

> AN: For Round 1 of QFL on FFNet
> 
> Content Warnings: Terminal illness, pureblood supremacy and the ensuing ideology
> 
> Wordcount: 1,028
> 
> Prompt: Accept or reject a marriage proposal

Astoria had known better than to expect to marry for love. After all, she was a part of the Sacred Twenty-Six, the most pure lineages in Great Britain, among the last purely magical lineages in the world. They were aristocracy, above the squabbling muggle families that dared to call themselves royal. Their bloodlines were even more endangered, more in need of preserving.

At least, that was what her mother and sisters had told her all of her life.

Astoria had never been much like her mother and sisters, not that it mattered. After all, she was too similar in the ways that mattered—she got into Slytherin. Even though she was more curious about the muggle world, about the students and the people she was chastised to not fraternize with under any circumstances.

She was the kind of girl that could only look out through the window and reach to touch the glass, never able to do anything other than observe the kind of world she wanted. For all the hours she spent in the library, reading about not just wizarding things but the muggle things too, with the stories that her mother never told her at bedtime, she was too timid and too afraid to shake the boat. She couldn’t perceive defying her parents openly.

After all, it was hard to defy anything when one’s own body was betraying her.

After the war, the Greengrass family had been fairly lucky in that they were more subtle with their support of the Dark Lord, able to deny it in the case of pleasant company and to pretend that they had never dreamed of a world in which their bloodline was falsely recognized as superior.

A few years out of the spotlight, perhaps in their manor in Wales rather than in London, focusing on Daphne’s engagement to the brilliant Artificer Theodore Nott and Astoria’s education and it was like the war had never happened to the House of Greengrass.

When Astoria graduated, she’d wanted to join a magizoology team—but Hyperion and Rhiannon Greengrass had different ideas. When she’d stepped off the Hogwarts Express on Platform Nine and Three Quarters, they held fresh letters with crisp ink outlining the words that she was certain would be her doom.

They’d explained to her that they wanted her to marry Draco Malfoy.

At first, she’d protested—after all, he had been instrumental in the plot to kill Albus Dumbledore, had been a prominent member of the new iteration of the Death Eaters. Surely it was bad for their reputation, to be consorting openly with the family that had been the right hand of the Dark Lord, so proudly executing his will.

And Astoria couldn’t see herself married to such a man.

But they told her about the gold, about preserving the bloodlines, and how Malfoy had become a renown alchemist, had been pardoned by Potter himself for some incident of help or another. It didn’t matter, they’d told her with grim, stern faces. Astoria’s prospects for marriage were far less, especially with that pesky blood curse running through her veins.

After all, they said, no one wanted to marry a damaged bride. But Malfoy would do, and maybe the bloodline could survive this malediction.

She was a witch, she was supposed to be above being ordered around and forced to do such primitive things. At least, that was part of the stories she’d been told at her mother’s knees. Yet another story that wasn’t true.

He came to visit her, to at least propose to her properly in the gardens behind the London manor of the House of Greengrass. Astoria had been on her best behavior, in her prettiest green dress, pointing out the exquisite magical flora her mother had worked tirelessly to cultivate. She spoke pretty words that meant nothing at all, for she knew the games.

He listened to her, or at least did a good job pretending to. Then he stopped, right before the flowers that were shaped like lilies, little clusters of petals made from starlight and shadows.

“They’re Astoria Lilies,” Astoria said, watching him observe them. “My mother named them after me, you see. Because she was a star goddess.”

He was not thinking about flowers, even though he held one in his hand, plucking it from the bush. “Do you really want to marry me?”

“I do.” Still, there was hesitation in Astoria’s voice.

“Not because our parents want for us to.” He stood up straight, looking at her with those gray eyes.

“I haven’t been given a reason to,” Astoria admitted. “But I’m not destined for a long life, anyway. Marriage to me. . . It wouldn’t be that long.”

She was surprised that he looked sad to hear her say that. She wouldn’t have expected that, from someone who had joined the ranks of the Dark Lord’s Inner Circle at the age of sixteen. Still, looking at him now—it was clear that something had changed.

Maybe there was more to Potter’s statement than Astoria had thought. She’d need to find the old Daily Prophet as soon as possible.

“I think we could be a good match to each other.” Draco stepped closer to her. “I remember in school that they said you weren’t a real Slytherin. That you sympathized with the. . .”

Astoria winced, waiting for the slur.

“Muggles,” Draco finished.

Astoria frowned.

“I’m not the same wizard I was in school,” he admitted with a self-deprecating smile. “I don’t think anyone else but you would understand.”

Astoria’s eyes widened—and she dared to be hopeful. “Maybe that’s true. Maybe we would make a good pair.”

“Then we agree?” He raised an eyebrow.

“It’s a reason.” Astoria nodded. “I think this could even be fun.”

“I’d like some fun.”

“Then let’s have some.” Astoria offered him her hand.

“We will.” Draco accepted her hand. “And I will make sure that even if our marriage is. . . Short, that it is a happy one. I would like to do some good, with my life.”

“I’d like that too.”

And so they continued down the gardens, hand-in-hand—with rings now on their left ring fingers.


End file.
